Fran Drescher stood in front of a barrage of cameras on Thursday to announce a catastrophic, game-changing event for the entertainment industry: The Actors Guild is going on strike. Drescher, formerly known as The Nanny, was there as president of SAG-AFTRA, which represents approximately 160,000 performers. In that moment, she also became an unbelievable leader at the forefront of the American labor movement.
Evokes characters like Norma Rae—and Howard “I’m going crazy and I won’t take this anymore” Beale in Network—Drescher delivered a passionate speech outlining the changing Hollywood landscape that led to this historic moment. “We are falling victim to a very greedy entity,” she said, criticizing the studios and streamers represented by AMPTP. She noted that they advocate poverty in negotiations while “give hundreds of millions of dollars to their CEOs. That’s disgusting. Shame on them. They are on the wrong side of history, at this very moment.”
Actors are often seen as privileged beings, but Drescher makes it clear that her guild is not only full of stars but also laborers. “We unite in unprecedented solidarity, our unions and our sister unions, and unions around the world are standing with us and other labor unions . Because at some point, the jig is up. You can’t continue to be miniaturized and marginalized, disrespected and humiliated,” she says, in a tone that ranges from tremulous to indignant. “This is a historic moment, a moment of truth. If we don’t stand up straight now, we’ll all be in trouble.”
The vehemence of Drescher’s speech left many in Hollywood stunned and moved. “Amazing, @frandrescher! Unite, we stand firm.” Elijah Wood tweetedwhile Elizabeth McGovern Written, “Forward Fran! In solidarity with writers, we fight for humanity in the entertainment business.” needle cattrall tweeted a Photo of her and Drescher’s clasped hands, with the words, “We are united.” captain Lindsay Dougherty voiceover her endorsement: “Fran MF Drescher brought the heat, the truth, and some real rage against the MACHINERY energy. @Teamsters is with you and all @sagaftra members! No one wants to go on strike, but the stakes are too high and Hollywood workers deserve more. #BadBitchesUnited.” Even writers who are currently on strike with the Writers Guild are feeling excited. David Simon, maker Wire, comment, “Just watched Fran Drescher chewing the face of #AMPTP. After her relatable remarks to this day, I confess that I thought she was a lost ball in the tall grass. But now, if I don’t cut the streaming service, I’ll download all the seasons of The Nanny.”
Drescher’s new status as labor hero is an unexpected turn of events, especially because—as Simon alluded to—she has alarmed SAG-AFTRA and WGA members with a number of statements. of the past few months. Most notably, in a video released just days before SAG’s contract expired on June 30, Drescher and SAG-AFTRA’s chief negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland boasted that they were having “extremely productive negotiations”. Drescher’s cheerful, playful tone has misled many people. “It was fun and I don’t think it’s the right message,” said one SAG-AFTRA member Vanity Fair at that time. Concerned that their clan was preparing to make a trivial deal, a large group of prominent actors signed a letter urging the leadership to stay tough.
Have more dismaying conversation when kim kardashian post a photo of her and Drescher taken at a Dolce & Gabbana promotional event in Italy just days before her contract with the association expired. “It’s not a pretty look,” one actor told me last week. Crabtree-Ireland enthusiastically defended Drescher at the strike press conference, pointing out that Fran is doing her job as a brand ambassador for the fashion line. “She’s doing a job she’s supposed to do by contract — she’s zooming in on our negotiations after working 18 hours or more a day, by the way.”
Even her rise to the presidency of SAG-AFTRA is controversial. She ran for office as a member of the Solidarity for Strength party in an intense race against Matthew Modine, who positioned himself as more of a flamethrower with the Membership First faction. Even though she won the election, some members still criticized her ability.
When I interviewed Drescher last year, she told me that as a little girl in Queens, she dreamed of becoming a politician, as well as a writer, a hairdresser and an actress. “I almost became all of them in different ways,” she said. She’s spent years playing small roles in television and movies (scream at the legendary Bobbi Flekman in This Is the Spine Faucet!) before she threw the president of CBS on a plane in 1991 and convinced him of her idea for a TV show about a nanny. The network wanted her to play an Italian character, but she insisted that it be a Jewish character with a Queen’s accent played by a real Jewish actor, the character was successful on network television. . Her character frequently speaks Yiddish words during rush hour — something Drescher repeats when she complain at the strike announcement, “What we finally got from [the studios] is what my mother calls lek and a schmeck,” which means “lick and smell.”
Turning perceived responsibility into a strength has always been a great skill for Drescher. “I have this widow’s pinnacle,” she told me last year, tucking her dark hair back, “and when I was a little girl, I thought I looked like Eddie Munster. Then my grandmother said to me, ‘Why? It’s so beautiful. It makes you a heart-shaped face.’ Then I liked it.”
In the following years Nanny ended, Drescher founded the nonprofit Cancer Schmancer, inspired by her own uterine cancer, and helped convince Congress to pass the Gynecological Cancer Education and Awareness Act, becoming She also served as the US State Department’s special public diplomacy envoy for health, traveling the world advocating for women’s health and cancer prevention. She always feels the need to “find better ways, refine what is, not accept what is,” she says. “And to be honest, it saved my life from uterine cancer, because I went to eight doctors over two years who basically all told me I had no problems. problem, and so I keep trying to find the answer.”
When I asked Drescher last year why she decided to become a clan leader, she told me: “All Zen masters say don’t try to swim against the current, let life come to you. . When this came to me as an opportunity to run, I really thought, This seems to be a combination of my many strengths and achievements at this defining moment.” She said of SAG-AFTRA, “We are one big team. And as a large group, we can be important. I think we should be important.
